[easy]

Today i was playing and either had an epiphany or a brain fart depends on how you look at it. I have decided i want to change my blackwood responses. I want to have 5 kings (or 4 if you play some form of key card)is appropriate. My fifth king will be a queen attached to a kxx or longer. This assumes that when pard bids rkc or straight blackwood followed by king ask we have all of the aces. Showing this "5" king may well allow pard to count 13 tricks for the grand.

Before i try this im giving you guys the opportunity to explain to me why I HAVE LOST MY F....... MIND. And if i havent lost my mind under which circumstances it might be appropriate to apply this method.

i can see where this could cause a problem when pard thinks i have a king that has just solidified his 4-card suit or longer are there any other pitfalls?

The reason this came up is because i was kibitzing this hand: I know the auction sucks please just address the concept.

Scoring: MP

1N - 3♣ transfer
3♦ 4n
5♦* 5n **
6♦ 6N

* - 0/3 controls
** - number of kings

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[kenrexford]

This might work, in theory, but it does not really seem to gain all that much, for a few reasons.

First, many auctions feature a lot of cuebidding before the 4NT axe is wielded. That gets us fairly far into the analysis.

Second, 5NT asks for Kings but allows partner to come into the decision-making. If ou have a nicely-placed Queen, and hopefully you can tell whether it is or not, you can often just bid the grand.

I'd suggest trying to avoid putting too much on 4NT.

[easy]

yeah very true, but as i told you , the auction reeked. change their hand to

axx
kqxx
ax
axxx

and they have the same 13 tricks

[mikeh]

One problem is that many players don't actually show the number of Kings in response to 5N (or the equivalent 'K' ask in other forms of keycard): they (including me) usually play 'specific King' responses, and this makes your scheme a bit difficult to implement.

And even if you play number of Kings, I truly think that you are underestimating the risk that partner will be left guessing.

Give him a side suit of, say, AQJx and the 'attached queen' of which you are so fond may be one trick, but the side suit K is, essentially, two extra tricks.. and he won't know which it is. Of course, if you show an impossible number of kings, the problem goes away, but we don't normally have that luxury.

The problem hand you suggested, of Axx KQxx Ax Axx: well, let me suggest that this is amongst the easiest 7 bids of all time.

Admittedly, this is based on an imp approach, where I would expect 5N to ALWAYS show interest in grand. In mps, one could argue that responder will sometimes be interested in knowing whether to risk 6N rather than, here, 6♦. But at imps, safety first prevails in choice of denomination for slams.

And if I held a 7 control 17 count, with my side queen firmly stuck to K and length, I am bidding 7... mean... if he is waiting for me to hold an AKQxx suit before I jump to 7, then he is overusing 5N.

Put another way: I would have been very tempted to upgrade this to an 18 count if I held the 3=4=2=4 hand you suggest. Tempted: heck, unless all my x's were tiny cards, I would do it.

[Echognome]

Well one idea is to use your space more efficiently. I wrote a long thread on what I called "Spiral Scanning" after keycard, which I believe is more efficient. When you ask for keycards, you really are looking for a 'number' of keycards. You plan to bid slam if off one keycard and signoff if off 2 keycards. (If off more than two keycards, you shouldn't have keycarded initially.) When you have all the keycards and want to try for slam, you will often be interested in specific kings, and, if there is space, specific queens. I haven't found a better method than spiral, but I'm sure there are some out there.

Here's the thread if you're interested:

http://forums.bridge...showtopic=21144